Their Nights
by RiaAndHerCourt
Summary: Elain and Azriel have trouble sleeping; An A Court of Thorns and Roses fic set after the events in ACoWaR
1. First Night

He was the spymaster, but he was no snoop.

At least, that was what Azriel told himself as he moved from shadow to shadow, winding around Velaris as easily as night itself. He knew the city was safe, knew Cassian would never let Velaris go a minute without the watch of hundreds of protectors. But on the nights when sleep too foreign an entity to understand, he roamed the city he loved.

He followed no pattern, simply abiding the whims of his shadows. The moon was nearly new tonight, and what sliver of light escaped was obscured by the clouds. They acted as he did, ebbing and flowing, drawn by something in the sky. Azriel followed the ebb and flow, alert but unconcerned. He had no plan to end up at the townhouse of his High Lord and Lady.

Rhysand and Feyre were away on business, some official duty Azriel thanked the Cauldron he had no part in. The careful words, the posturing, sometimes it was necessary to him. But the silence, the shadows, those suited him far better.

Even without their presence, the townhouse was safe.

Instead of following another shadow down or flying away, perhaps to his own room, Azriel stilled. It was quiet in the way the hours before dawn were always quiet. It was the quiet of peace.

Until he heard something in that quiet. Faint, barely there… but a sound nonetheless.

 _Elain?_

Concealed in the shadows, he eased closer to her chambers. The sound repeated. Stifled, as though it escaped each time, came Elain's sobs.

She sat in a chair with her back to the window. So opposite all the days she'd stared outside, on a plane not even the most determined Illyrian could fly to. Her hands cradled her face, occasionally moving to muffle another sob. The air was ever so slightly salty from her tears. Her bed was untouched.

Time lost meaning quickly. It was impossible for Azriel to leave, and there was no chance of sleep for him while Elain was in this state. But to approach her? Here, now?

He stayed in the shadows until dawn, reluctantly returning home as Elain moved atop her covers and closed her eyes.

He knew she would have no more sleep than him.

Finally, once he sensed the shadows shift around him, alerting him to the presence of the two half-wraiths who served Rhysand, Azriel flew off to do whatever the Night Court needed of its spymaster.


	2. Second Night

The next night, Azriel returned to his perch in the shadows next to Elain's window. It was hardly midnight, and this time her chair was perpendicular to the window.

Tonight, there were no sobs.

Azriel waited. He would be there all night, even if he stood no chance at fighting the demons of the past that haunted the woman who could see the future.

No sobs came.

He remained; it was even darker tonight, the moon not even a sliver in the sky.

No sobs; a sound.

"You can come in," Elain said. If not for the perfect silence of the night he almost would have missed her words.

"You can see me?" he said with mild surprise. That was… unusual.

A dry laugh, almost more of a cough. "I see a great deal more than most expect. Maybe I can't see in the shadows, but your presence is unmistakable."

Azriel emerged from the dark, perched on the window sill with his legs on the inside of Elain's chambers. Behind him, his wings slowly extended, enjoying the night air. A silent question hung on his lips.

"I know you were here last night as well."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

She didn't look at him. "I wasn't much for talking."

"If you had told me to leave, I would have. Or now." The words weren't quite a lie. He would if she asked; he had no desire to make her uncomfortable. But it would not be easy, not after he'd heard her pitifully muffled sobs, powerless to stop them, one after another.

She still did not look at him. "I… did not mind your presence."

The silence came between them. Not the same quiet the rest of Velaris enjoyed, not the peaceful one. It simply… was.

"Was it a bad dream?" Not that she seemed to have slept.

Elain shook her head. As the silence stretched on, Azriel began to wonder if she would answer.

"Dreams… it's never dreams, never anything different from reality. Every time. I close my eyes and it's always a perfect rendition of reality, exactly as twisted and demented as it was the first time I lived it. It be easier. But it never is."

She turned her head at the end to Azriel. There was nothing imploring in her gaze, no silent desire for contradicion. Just a gaze that had seen all the worst their world had to offer. The shadowsinge returned her look.

"I… I have seen and done a great many things. There are few I regret, and none are acts I've done in the defense of this court. I told Rhys I would be his spymaster, and every day I am glad to serve him in this way. But I've partaken in more horrors than I could have conceptualized five centuries ago. I've watched countless more from the shadows, having to watch brutal cruelty, powerless to stop it as the spymaster. That is my duty.

"And in this tentative peace, I tell myself it is worth it. The shadows, the screams, the blood on my blade. But at night… "

"But at night…" Elain murmured.

"At night, I'm left awake, surrounded by thoughts of all I've seen and wonder if it's all worth it. After five hundred years, it should get easier. But it never has."

The silence that engulfed them was the silence of two people who had more lived more nightmares than they could dreams.

"It truly never gets better?" For a moment, her gaze was imploring, begging Azriel to tell her a lie she could believe. A lie some powerful faerie could turn into a truth.

"I can only tell you of the past. What do you see in the future?"

A sigh. "Nothing. Only more of this."

Azriel turned and looked to where the moon should have been. "This is a dark night."

Elain followed his gaze. "It is. It's empty."

"No, not empty. It's full of shadows. Many hold nightmares, or worse, the horrors you and I have seen. But tonight… I will be one of those shadows. And should you want or need anything, you know where to find me."

A small nod.

Azriel turned to the outside, and as if he was part of the night he slipped away again.


	3. Third Night

On the third night, Elain awaited the spymaster atop her sheets. It had been several days since she had last slept, and sleep had become a tantalizing prospect. But she knew in her bones that he would come tonight and something in her… She did not want to be asleep when he arrived.

Not because she thought Azriel would be disappointed. In truth, the selfish part of her did not care if Azriel was keen to find her awake or not. She would play no role to please him.

But Elain knew she had always been the selfish child. Nesta was hard and Feyre put them before herself with every breath in those winters; now Feyre put the world before her own needs at times. But Elain was selfish. She could be quiet, demure, but now she did as she wished. Even if her wishes were not terribly extravagant.

Whether that wish was to talk to Azriel in the anonymity of night time or to not see her father's broken neck everytime she was careless enough to blink.

Though she could not see him, she felt as he arrived. It was as though the lonely curtain around her parted ever so slightly to let him in.

"Come in," she murmured from atop her sheets.

Azriel appeared, half perched in her window, unusual waves of uncertainty rolling off the hardened Illyrian warrior. "Hello."

"Hello."

She did not beckon him to her bed, so Azriel pulled her customary chair away from her desk and sat. It was uncomfortable against his wings.

Seeing Azriel in her room was not unpleasant, Elain decided. But the chair wouldn't do. "You can sit on my bed. I'm not Amren; I don't bite."

That earned a small chuckle. "Amren had never bitten me. She says I'm not tender enough."

Elain appraised the warrior in his tight leathers. Physically, perhaps.

"Nonetheless," she said with a pat on the mattress. It was wide enough to allow for a space between them.

Azriel moved over, still, as if waiting.

"In the Illyrian war camps, are there only stools?"

A nod. Azriel searched for words. "You seem to be in better spirits this eve."

She smiled at the shadowsinger, in a broad way that seemed almost too bright to be sincere and yet it was. "I'm tired enough that my thoughts can't hold on to the dreary ones. It takes a few days, but I expect I'll at least sleep tonight."

"I can leave if you need to rest," he assured her, making no move to get up.

An eye roll. "Any moment I'm too tired to be miserable is worth the sleep I miss. Besides, I've been meaning to ask you something."

Azriel gave a solemn nod, awaiting any question she would ask. He felt certain it would not be an easy one, but he resolved to be like his blade, a truth teller.

"Is it true you have the biggest wingspan?"

As Azriel registered her question, Elain would have sworn the shadows nearly peeled off the wall.

"Who, exactly, brought up the, err, wingspan discussion?"

Elain ignored the question. _Best let Azriel guess between Mor and Amren rather than Nuala and Cerridwen._

"Is it true?" she repeated.

"Who brought it up?"

A shrug from Elain.

Azriel was happy to let the subject talk.

This was not to say the spymaster did not have exact measurements of the winged members of their circle. He simply would rather not tell Elain that her sister outdid all of them.

"Is it difficult to have wings?"

Another question. "Difficult?"

She waved at the chair. "Is it troublesome to deal with them each day?"

"I suppose I've learned how to handle them over time, to anticipate knocking into a doorway and tuck them close and such."

Elain waited, seeming certain there was more though Azriel had not intended to expand on it. A few moments passed, the candle on her night table barely more than a stub, flickering, flickering.

"There was a time when I did not know if I should love or hate my wings."

Elain waited again.

"If I did not have them… I doubt they would ever have let me out. I would have been too other; the wings led to empathy." Empathy? Azriel wondered at his word choice. Did those… kin of his ever look at him, see a brother, and still chose to torture him? "But I cursed the wings for making me one of them."

"You're not."

The candle blew out, but Azriel held her gaze anyway. "I'm not?"

"You're no more like them because of your wings than I am like High Fae for having pointed ears. We are different."

Azriel almost tasted the regret as the words slipped from him: "But isn't our difference our nightmare?"

In the dark he saw her eyes dim, the sleepless kindness retracting, replacing the seer with a broken shell.

She drew herself under the covers. "Good night."

 _I'm sorry_. Azriel flew away.


End file.
